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Where was I? Oh yeah! In the last chapter, I was talking about the evolution of motion picture and ended with Fred Ott’s Sneeze, the first film officially registered for copyright on January 7, 1894 by William K.L Dickinson and Thomas Edison. This chapter will focus on the brief history of motion picture in the 20th century. by dinky didini
as a projector. It was patented on February 13 1895. On 28 December, 1895, the Lumière Brothers made their first public screening of the world’s first motion pictures, where 10 short films were screened. Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory) was the first film among the ten. Most of the latter developments in film were in America, so I am afraid this article will also have to sound a bit biased. As we all know the early films started with the silent era. In the 20th century, Edwin S. Porter was the first serious filmmaker who worked under the Edison Company in a style called “primitive.” Among his famous feature films were The Life of an American Fireman (1903), The Great Train Robbery (1903) and The Kleptomaniac (1905).Documentary films were practised much later where in the first

istory – ii

fter Dickinson and Edison, one of the most important developments in motion picture was the invention the ‘Cinématographe’ by the Lumière Brothers from France. This motion picture camera was also used
Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory

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documentary film, Nanook of the North (1922) was made by Robert J. Flaherty. This documentary film was shot for two years from August 1920 to August 1921, where Flaherty documented the life of an Eskimo, Inuk Nanook and his family in the Canadian Arctic. The film industry started flourishing in the 1920s. This decade saw the rise of film studios, which were known as The Big Five and The Little Three. The Big Five were the major production houses namely - Warner Bros. Pictures, Famous Players-Lasky (Paramount), RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum) Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Fox Film Corporation/Foundation (20th-Century Fox). The Little Three were the minor studios which were Universal Pictures, United Artists and Columbia Pictures. The 1930s and 1940s were the blooming decades for Hollywood, known as the Golden Age of Hollywood. During the first half of the 20th century, the film industries in the other countries did not develop much as their economy was greatly affected by the world wars. America’s economy was no gravely affected as the others, which immensely benefited the film industries. In 1927, The Jazz Singer was the first feature film which was incorporated with sound (synchronized dialogue), thus giving birth to the ‘talkies’ era. While most of the motion pictures in the first half of the 20th century were in black and white, colour motion picture was also simultaneously produced but at a smaller scale. Among the first successful technique used in colour motion picture was Kinemacolor, developed by

an English inventor George Albert Smith of Brighton, in 1906. It was commercially used from 1908-1914. Later in 1914, The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded in Boston, USA. The company developed a colour motion picture process known as ‘Technicolor’. Though not the first, The Wizard of Oz (1939) was among the most popular Technicolour film. Meanwhile, in India, the first silent feature film was Raja Harishchandra (1913)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Raja Harishchandra (1913)

made by Dadasaheb Phalke. The first Indian film with sound was Alam Ara (1931) made by Ardeshir Irani. Development peeked in a bit later in Indian film industry and Bollywood; the leading Indian film industry entered its Golden Age in from late 1940s to the 1960s.

During this period, in 1950s Parallel Cinema (Art Cinema) also found its way in Indian film industry. Back in America during 1970s, Hollywood was also hit by a new wave of filmmakers. Various restrictions on language, adult content and sexuality, and violence were removed, which gives way for implementing novel ideas in films. This decade also saw the rise of special effects with from emerging directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. From 1980s onwards, there has been tremendous development in Hollywood and other film industries elsewhere in the world. With the turn of the new millennium, we have seen the immensity of technological development. Words cannot describe all them all. It’s been more than a century now since the invention of this stupendous visual art; all are who are not physically blind are witnesses of this marvel. There will be more unthinkable marvels in the film industry but back in Mizoram, we still have a long, long way to go. We are developing at our own pace, a great future is ahead of us; and my wish and dream is that day when we will be producing such world class marvels. Now with the release of Khawnglung Run, we are already one step ahead; but we still have thousands of steps to climb.
P.S : if you want to read more on film history, please log on to http://www.filmsite.org/